{"id":309326,"date":"2026-04-09T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T11:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/?p=309326"},"modified":"2026-04-08T14:43:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T18:43:45","slug":"we-were-too-young-to-understand-what-happened-with-the-man-in-the-white-van","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/electricliterature.com\/we-were-too-young-to-understand-what-happened-with-the-man-in-the-white-van\/","title":{"rendered":"We Were Too Young to Understand What Happened With the Man in the White Van"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cMetamorphosis,\u201d an excerpt from The Evolution of Fire<\/a> <\/em>by Angela Pelster<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the kind of hot summer day in rural Alberta where my limbs hang so heavy that I wobble as I walk, almost drunkenly, and bump against Caroline and Kim beside me. \u201cSorry,\u201d I mutter, and they push me away half-heartedly while Chris weaves back and forth on his yellow BMX bike. We\u2019ve been kicked out of the house and told to go play. We already rambled through the ditches, took turns targeting trees with rocks, moseyed our skinny legs past the few houses around us, past a farmer\u2019s field with cows, a small creek, past the frog pond where we catch tadpoles in the spring and pour them into glass jars that we set inside the house so we can watch them grow and lose their tails and sprout their funny legs.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I learned about metamorphosis in school last year, and it makes my stomach and fingers and feet and head fill with happiness to think about it. The magic of it. Right there in this pond. Like some witch is waving her wand and zapping creatures into other creatures, except the witch is Mother Nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t understand it exactly, but metamorphosis seems a lot like evolution. And evolution means that some people think we used to be monkeys. I look at Caroline while we walk and imagine her covered in hair, imagine her teeth and mouth turned enormous, her picking bugs off my head and eating them like the sister monkeys do on nature shows, swinging from a tree with one arm. That I can imagine; we\u2019re both excellent at hanging from the monkey bars on the playground at recess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she\u2019s too old to actually do that now. The girls in her grade just stand around in groups and talk, yell at the boys, sometimes walk around the yard, but I can still do the highest baby-drop of anyone in my class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think our family believes in evolution though. At least, I don\u2019t think our church does, but I\u2019m not sure. Maybe people at church who don\u2019t believe in evolution haven\u2019t thought much about tadpoles, because it\u2019s scary to see how weird they look when they\u2019re caught between half tadpole and half frog, but it\u2019s also super cool. And that makes me wonder if maybe I\u2019m a half something too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tadpoles in our pond have all turned to frogs by now, so we keep walking, aimless, talking, sometimes laughing, nudging one another along in the heat, meandering back home with no real purpose but that we want to return. Maybe this time we\u2019ll be allowed to stay inside and watch something on TV in the cool dark of the family room, though we already know there\u2019ll only be soaps on midafternoon. We aren\u2019t allowed to watch soaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a white van. No windows on the side. But instead of driving by, it reaches us and stops.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The roads are deserted. Heatwaves simmer ghostly above the asphalt while the power lines hum over our heads and a chickadee dee-dees to some bird-love in the forest. We have the place to ourselves, it seems. The world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But then, there\u2019s the sound of a vehicle turning onto our gravel subdivision road, coming behind us slowly. We turn to watch it, move to the side to let it pass as we\u2019ve been taught. There\u2019s plenty of room; the road is wide. It\u2019s a white van. No windows on the side. But instead of driving by, it reaches us and stops. A man with curly hair smiles and asks us for directions to a place nearby. We all know where it is, but Caroline, the oldest and best at talking to strangers, steps forward and walks around to his window to answer him. She\u2019s smiling and confident as always, easy with strangers. I watch her and envy that ease, wonder if I\u2019ll ever learn to talk to people the way she does because I\u2019m the shy one. I will also be \u201cthe tall one,\u201d my aunt has predicted, because Caroline will be \u201cthe pretty one.\u201d We follow her lead to the front of the van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He doesn\u2019t seem to understand what she\u2019s saying, which is strange because the directions are simple, but how fun to know more than a grown-up. The man opens the door to hear Caroline better, I think, and the door comes between us, separates us from her while we wait. He\u2019s still confused, and she repeats herself again, but she looks nervous and shy now, uncertain, which is strange. Finally, the door closes and the stranger drives away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The air hums. None of us move. We, four children, stand on the gravel road, the sun hot on our dark heads. We look at the wet, white puddle on the ground in front of us until Chris asks what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPee,\u201d says Caroline. \u201cHe peed in front of me.\u201d But it looks nothing like pee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We look at one another, at the puddle, at our shoes. We wonder if something just happened to us. Some change planted deep and about to sprout. We feel it, but don\u2019t know if it matters. Should we tell someone? Mom is at work, so it would have to be Dad. Dad is risky\u2014he could get mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My stomach fills with something like fear, but I don\u2019t understand it. We decide to tell. We turn toward the cool walls of the shop in the backyard, where Dad is at work on somebody\u2019s car.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s furious when Caroline tells him that some man just peed in front of her, and he understands something about it that I don\u2019t, something related to my fear. He calls the police and then jumps into his old green pickup with the other mechanic he\u2019s hired for help and leaves us alone while he drives around looking for the curly-haired man in the white van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t understand: his anger, his driving around, his calling the police. But the something sick and scared is bigger now. We go inside the house. No one is around to tell us not to. We gather in the bedroom that I share with Caroline, the four of us on our two beds, and we wait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a very tall, very large police officer at our door later that night, and Dad greets him like a friend showing up to a party. Something has shifted in him now, and his anger is gone, replaced by an emotion that seems more like excitement. He guides the policeman through our house and sits him at our kitchen table, in Caroline\u2019s chair. We stand beside him, two at each elbow, gathered like a family photograph. He looks at each of us children, asks us our names, smiles, puts a business card in each of our small hands. It has a silhouette picture of a man behind bars and black and red letters that say Crime Stoppers<\/em>. His name is DET. G. F. (Gary) Jones, it says, but we don\u2019t use his name. We hardly say anything. He asks us questions about the van, what the man said, what he looked like, what we said back to him. He writes down notes. It\u2019s very quiet as the pen scratches along the paper. And then he pulls out a photo album as thick as my palm is wide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThese,\u201d he says, opening up to the very first page, \u201care all men who\u2019ve done similar things to kids around here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Around here? <\/em>I wonder. To other kids<\/em>? Maybe kids I know?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are pages and pages of men in the album, and I wonder why so many of them are going around peeing, why they would do it in front of kids. The men look sad and tired; some of them look scary; none of them look like the curly-haired man from the white van.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policeman stays for a long time taking notes, and he tells us that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will search the area for the next few weeks. When he\u2019s done, he looks up and around at our house, says that it\u2019s very nice. Most visitors say this, and my dad smiles, pleased, and we all know what\u2019s coming next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWould you like a tour?\u201d he asks the policeman. And the policeman says yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like a travel guide, my dad shows him our dining room off the kitchen and the table loaded with papers to be filed; he shows him the office packed with boxes from our childhood to be sorted through, the room with the empty hot tub that rarely works, the bathrooms, our messy bedrooms. He opens our door and shows him our pink canopied bedroom filled with clothes and toys, dolls and books, our life spread out before him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The policeman smiles. I can tell he wants to leave now, had maybe only ever been politely interested, though my dad doesn\u2019t seem to notice it. Dad continues to tell him about the double thickness of the walls, the fire-retardant insulation, how he designed the house himself, had the blueprints done up from his own drawings, and then finally, he\u2019s finished. They\u2019re at the door shaking hands. The policeman leaves. Dad returns to his shop out back; Chris and Kim go to their separate bedrooms; Caroline and I go to ours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Years later, when I\u2019m a teenager and old enough to understand but somehow still don\u2019t, I say something to Caroline late one night, lying in the dark while we talk, about the time that man peed in front of us. \u201cPeed in front of us\u201d has become our code for the thing we don\u2019t know how to discuss and the title we give to that moment that changed us without our understanding why. But Caroline\u2019s old enough now, too, and tonight she\u2019s had enough of the code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t pee,\u201d she spits, angry and hurt at my little-sister stupidity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caroline had once told me that she\u2019d stopped wearing pretty earrings after that day.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOh,\u201d I say dully. And I remember again the man\u2019s face, my dad\u2019s anger, the police visit and the photo album. I remember, remember, remember how the van door had opened and cut me off from Caroline, and that something had happened to all of us, but in different ways. How no one talked to us about it. How Caroline had once told me that she\u2019d stopped wearing pretty earrings after that day, said she\u2019d thought that maybe he\u2019d done it because she\u2019d worn those earrings. Wanted to look pretty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I think of how it had ended with the policeman\u2019s visit and a guided tour through our house, all our private spaces on display with us kids clinging at the edges. I think of the tadpoles we used to catch in the spring, the way their arms ripped through their chests one day when it was time. And I wonder if it hurt. If they knew what it meant. We carried them back to the pond when it happened so they wouldn\u2019t die in our jars. They clung to the edges as we poured, their hearts beating hard beneath pale skin, little bodies of uncertainty shaken loose from their homes into unknown territory. They grabbed for one another as they fell, arms outstretched, like sisters in the dark, like fire reaches for fire, the warmth of another flame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

From <\/em>The Evolution of Fire: Essays on Crisis and Becoming. Copyright \u00a9 2026 by Angela Pelster. Used by permission of Milkweed Editions. All rights reserved.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMetamorphosis,\u201d an excerpt from The Evolution of Fire by Angela Pelster It\u2019s the kind of hot summer day in rural Alberta where my limbs hang so heavy that I wobble as I walk, almost drunkenly, and bump against Caroline and Kim beside me. \u201cSorry,\u201d I mutter, and they push me away half-heartedly while Chris weaves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":309327,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6181,85],"tags":[178,92,55,94],"class_list":["post-309326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-personalnarrative","category-essay","tag-family","tag-feminism","tag-politics","tag-relationships"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nWe Were Too Young to Understand What Happened With the Man in the White Van - Electric Literature<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The moment changed us without our understanding why\" \/>\n<meta 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